TO P. B. AXELROD

Published:First published in 1924 inLenin Miscellany II.

      Sent from Munich to Zurich.

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1971,

      Moscow,Volume 36,

      page107.Translated:Andrew RothsteinTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

March 22, 1902

Howis your health after your journey? Have you
recovered from the life of a wanderer, and from the
“reaction” you expected when you were going away?

VelikaDmitrievna sent you G. V.’s programme and our
scheme for a “settlement in
committee”,[2]through a
committee of arbitrationsui generis. This schemeseemsto be
falling through because of G. V.’s unwillingness, but I
don’t yet know this for certain. I should like to know your
impression of G. V.’s new draft and which of the two drafts
you now favour.

Thecopying of your
pamphlet[3]hasonly justbeen
started: up to now the copyist was busy with copying forIskra(with Tsvetov away,Iskrahas been making very slow
headway: only one issue will appear in March). Evidently
delay is inevitable if your pamphlet is to be published here;
but if you are very much opposed to this, let me know, and
we may then send it on to Geneva. If speed is not so
important for you, then as soon as the copying is finished and
Tsvetov returns, the pamphlet will be sent to the printers.

Afew more words about the programme. We consider
it very undesirable to put it up for a vote by thewholeLeague (instead of the editorial board alone),respective[1]have a discussion in the press among ourselves (although
this will not be easy to avoid if the attempt to reach
agreement fails). What is your opinion?

Allthe very best wishes for your health.

[2]Areference to the second draft Party Programme drawn up by
Plekhanov.

The“settlement in committee ” consisted in agreeing two draft
programmes—Lenin’s and Plekhanov’s—in a co-ordinating
committee appointed by theIskraEditorial Board to work out a single
draft programme of the R.S.D.L.P. Prospective members for the
committee were Martov, Zasulich, Dan or Deutsch (seeLenin
Miscellany II, pp. 91–92).

Thedraft agreement did not “fall through”, as Lenin had feared:
Plekhanov agreed to a settlement in committee, and the agreed
draft was approved by theIskraEditorial Board in Zurich
on April 14, 1902, in Lenin’s absence. The draft Programme of
the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, worked out by the
Editorial Board ofIskraandZarya, was published inIskraNo. 21
on June 1, 1902.

[3]Areference to P. B. Axelrod’s article which he intended to issue
in pamphlet form as a supplement toIskra. The article, entitled
“The Emergence in Our Country of Bourgeois Democracy as an
Independent Revolutionary Force”, appeared only in 1906 in
a collection of his articles,The Struggle of Socialist and
Bourgeois Trends in the Russian Revolutionary Movement.